Short abstract:

This panel seeks to bring together papers that empirically explore the multiple ways in which violent conflicts and related external interventions are shaping the growth of African cities and everday experiences of city dwellers.

Long abstract:

Forced and conflict-related displacement has short and long-term impacts on patterns of growth of African cities. New forms of camp-urbanisation appear to be emerging and this has drawn the attention of international humanitarian organisations. Humanitarian interventions that acknowledge the specificity of urban conflicts and post conflict urban planning have become key topics on the agenda of development. In many (post-) conflict cities humanitarian actors collaborate with sovereigns to find solutions to what are now framed as 'new urban problems'. New forms of urban planning emerge and shape the ways cities are governed, their infrastructures, security installations, or (re-)settlement schemes. Urban political, social and economic relations are affected by these processes, and cities may even become more central for competing (armed and unarmed) actors as their symbolic and material value increases.
Considering both the disruptions and connections associated with violent conflicts and wars, this panel seeks to bring together papers that empirically explore the multiple ways in which violent conflicts and related external interventions are shaping the growth of cities and the experiences of city dwellers. We invite papers that focus on the everyday of urban growth and in-migration, and the ways city expansion and in-migration are governed, often by multiple actors that operate simultaneously on different spatial scales. We also invite comparative studies, or studies that outline regional trends and wider connections between conflict urbanisation and the (world) market or with global forms of governance. The organisers welcome multi and interdisciplinary contributions that provide in-depth single case studies or comparative analyses of city dynamics in conflicts.